“Heaven forfend. Is that Kermit?” Yellowhat piped up.

The bard’s voice jolted El Sha La and the others from their doldrums. She squinted into the misty distance, still blurry from her too-brief sleep. Against Hat’s advice, they’d rowed deep into the night, trying to find the river mouth.

They should have found it, but the map’s scale was in Khem Versts. None of them could convert to Lhaz Leagues. By the time the party pitched camp, the only ground around was windy and exposed. Not long after, a cold fog blew down the coast and closed around them. It was impossible to keep the fire lit.

El Sha La spent her watch chattering her teeth as she muttered arcane rudiments to herself. She had a whole summer’s worth of shirking to make up for. Across the pit, Sters the Hook stared into the dark. A lifetime of stakeouts had made a superb sentry of the leg-breaking brute.

Sters remained silent as a stone until it was time to rouse Revel and Yellowhat for their shift. Much as she would have preferred to make use of Revel, it was best not to give the bard and the brute time together to conspire. She didn’t want to wake up with her throat slit.

She woke chilled to the bone, spent before the day even began. It was all her fault for pushing them too far. No one brought it up, but their quiet judgment stung worse than a shout.

Hat pointed a ways off. For long distances, he had stronger eyes than the rest of them. Sters stared and shrugged. He had a keen ear but, like El’s, his sight was short. Revel visored his eyes against the sunrise with his palm and yawned in astonishment.

“Is he naked?” Revel asked.

“That’s Kermit,” Yellowhat and Sters agreed in unison.

As they drew closer, it was all too clear. In the new dawn, a hairy old man sunned himself on a flat shelf of stone that overhung a tide pool. He was, indeed, stark as the day he was born. Kermit’s dome was wispy and brown as a coconut.

A life spent in the elements had left his face as leatherbound as a grimoire. His beard was long and white, almost long enough to serve as a loincloth, but not quite.

Kermit’s floating galley-gallery was lashed to the rocks below. His boat was a flat-bottomed punt, ringed by raised staves surrounded by screens of whittled wood. Kermit had scavenged broken bits of banisters, warped wagon wheels, cracked-up crab traps, and any sort of loose lumber he could lay hands on and worked it all into a sort of canvas-cage that rose from the gunwale of his boat.

Every surface was scored with elaborate scrimshaw. There were spirals of strange phrases, clusters of inhuman faces, reaching hands, glaring eyes, all worked with disturbingly superb detail. This unclad madman was once a master craftsman.

“Ho! Kermit the Hermit, what are you doing way out here?” Yellowhat called out as they glided closer. He eyed the other boat. It must have been pure murder rowing the rudderless punt all the way from Tinkerton.

“Fuck off,” Kermit answered directly to the sky and did not open his eyes, as if he conversed with the gods themselves.

“Why, it’s your old friend, Yellowhat,” the bard called back.

“Oh? Ho there, Hat. They told me a man of song would soon be along. Said you’d come bearing gifts without virtue. Got any cane?”

“Sadly, I am tapped. Virtue was the first to go. Cover yourself Kermit, there’s ladies present,” Hat called over.

He dropped his voice to a whisper for the benefit of his boatmates. “He’s star-touched. Let me do the talking.”

Yellowhat steered their canoe close to the tide pool, sagely downwind and out of spitting range. Quite unabashed, Kermit spewed a string of elaborate anatomical oaths as he rose. A battered brimstone raincoat hung from the bowspirit of his punt.

Kermit glanced at it, disdained to bother fetching it, and instead, sat cross-legged so that his beard fell in his lap. He was walleyed twice and turned his cheek to peer at Yellowhat from his right. He scanned the others with his left, and his face scrunched in confusion.

“Is that Sters the Hook? Have my uncles lost patience at last? Oh, bitter bard, have you come to slay me and scatter my sacred skiff to the seven winds?”

Yellowhat doffed his namesake to look at Kermit eye to eye, fiend to fiend.

“And vex the High Ones so close to their home? I’d sooner snuff myself, old friend. No, we come for another. What brings you so close to the Mouth of Madness?”

“They keep calling me.” Kermit tapped the fringe of fine white hair that haloed his sun-scorched gourd.

“What do you hear, friend?”

“Cacophony manifest. Tyranameade tempts, Baeyerilith bellows, Lady Hadriate promises me the moon and all it shines upon. They tell me the storm to end all storms will come. Soon, the water will break, and catastrophe shall be born again. The High Ones shall issue forth from Great Inaltazei and lay waste to the works of man. Tell me, Yellowhat. Are you the sign I sought? A messenger from the Most High?”

“Unwitting, if I am, friend. I doubt she’d use such a tawdry vessel.”

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Kermit held his full focus on Yellowhat for only a moment, then his eyes spasmed in a fit of nystagmus. He shook his head.

“Now is the time for choosing. Help me, Yellowhat. Should I bust up my boat? If I deface these sacred carvings, perhaps they’ll lend me the strength of arm to climb the Rakkar. I might stand before the Most High and die enlightened.”

“No, friend. The Rakkar runs too swift. You’d wind up walking ashore, and a leercat would get you. It’s no journey for a lone man.”

“The low road, then. Pitch pines weep in yonder swamp. I had a dream where I gathered up black balls of tar by the bucketful. Then, I rowed the canals in the dead of the night and slung blazing gobs out on the rooftops. When dawn broke, all of Lhaz was aflame. After the town burned down, the High Ones came and crowned me king. Flame will gain their favor.”

Hat paused at the notion and wrung his shapeless hat, apparently in deep thought. El could not tell if his consideration was serious or merely humoring a lunatic. Yellowhat was a superb liar.

“That’s quite a dilemma, old friend. For me, I believe it is better to be a bum, free on one’s feet than the lonely lord of some smoldering ash-heap. The High Ones will make you wear clothes, Kermit. Lordly raiment to perch upon your throne of cinders, heavy robes to officiate over virgin sacrifices and such. Shoes will pinch your toes. You’d hate it.”

“Wise words.” Kermit gave a somber nod to Hat’s sagacity.

“So, it seems neither course shall suit. Perhaps there is a third way? What do the High Ones say?” Hat led him on.

“Bah! Their vile entreaties don’t bear repeating. I’m too old for their seductions, too stubborn for their instructions. Still, they beseech me night and day. ‘Set me free!’ But how can I? You tell it true. Even if I break up my masterpiece, I’ll never reach the Rapaxoris alone.”

“Why linger, then?”

“The voices don’t let up. For two days I’ve lain awake upon this beach, waiting for some sign from the Most High. I’ve caught naught but cold nights and sandflea bites. You come in the guise of brotherly commiseration, yet you feign a lack of cane so you can keep it all for yourself. Some friend you are, Yellowhat! If it’s to be that way, perhaps I ought to row out to the deep lake and surrender myself to the great gray. I’ll spare myself the dark days to come.”

“The great gray, you say? Speaking of, have you seen Fish?”

Kermit twitched and gulped down whatever he’d been about to blurt. His jaw ground back and forth as he looked over the other members of the bard’s party. His left eye was lazier than the right. At last, his wandering gaze locked onto El Sha La.

“I see lots of things,” Kermit led.

“Do you see this?” El Sha La asked. Gold flashed between her fingers.

“At this distance, I can make out only a glimmer. Perhaps if I held it in my hand?”

El Sha La tossed the golden ducat. Kermit bobbled the catch but snapped a foot on top of the coin before it could clatter into tide pool. Deftly, he picked it up the between two toes and held it up to his eye. Revel grunted with distaste. They got quite an eyeful.

“A whole coinfish! Bless you, miss! Why, I could build a whole new boat with this!” Kermit gasped.

“Beyond a boat, I mean to buy your silence. Tell no one you have seen us. That gold comes from Arath the Unraveller.”

The mention of her father’s name brought Kermit’s adulation to a sudden crash. His eyes darted in different directions, and he stammered, suddenly flummoxed.

“Y-y-yes, of course. I shan’t say a word, miss, not that anyone would listen anyway.”

“Tell me everything you’ve seen, Sir Kermit,” El Sha La bid.

“Not long after I moored here, Fish and his accomplice happened upon me. They were in a short canoe. They had no great baggage, just packs. Fish waved. He meant to paddle past, but I hailed him. I could tell they were bound for the mouth.

“I begged them to bring me along, but Fish refused. He said his canoe was only big enough for two. Then, I offered to spell Rigel and give him my boat. That boy has no business in the Rapaxoris! They wouldn’t take the trade, for Rigel’s wanted by the guard and Halfking’s uncles both. That lad has no luck. Fish warned me I oughtn’t tell anyone I’d seen them pass. He left me empty-handed. See what he bought for naught!” Kermit’s hands flew in a sweep of beggar’s pique.

“Only two days ahead. We can still catch them.” El Sha La sighed with relief.

“Did you see a silver fencing dagger?” Revel butt in.

“Yes, indeed! The boy shifted it to his other side to be sly, but I saw her shine upon the water. I see all the angles.”

Kermit grinned with pride, then blanched at the grim look on Revel’s face.

“I beg you, ser shant. Spare that boy. He’s only the pimp’s pawn, yoked to his father’s debts. Whatever he took from you, he only did what he was told.”

“A thief is a thief,” Revel growled.

El shook her head.

“I know Rigel's tale. I don’t need the boy, only what he stole. If they give it back, I’ll spare them both. Did you see a blue glass ball? About the side of a plum?”

“They kept it hid, but I could feel the wind sing around them, sighing for release. Some star has their finger upon them, miss. When they’d left, visions swirled around me, thick as mayflies.”

“What did you see, Kermit?” Yellowhat asked. He leaned forward, genuinely interested. Something came over Kermit as he spoke. His voice rang with overtones, and his leathery face twisted, as if two voices spoke from one mouth.

“I have seen an army of echoes rowing in the mariner’s wake. I have seen the Rakkar rise in rage. I have seen the great Inaltazei crack like an egg and the sky split asunder. All Lhaz will be laid to waste! The lake will drain dry, and the grand gates of Grimbalgon will swing wide. A horned host shall issue forth, and their trumpets shall sound the end of days. Bring me with you, please! I can talk with the High Ones, I can beg them on your behalf. You must! You must!”

“Boat’s full, I’m afraid.” Yellowhat pushed off with his oar as he apologized and dropped his voice low. “Row! He’ll rage.”

The others set to with haste.

“You fools! You will all be devoured!”

Kermit launched into a fit of vile oaths. He scrambled for stones to throw, but his aim was worse than his aroma. The four adventurers stroked hard to get distance from the madman and did not stop until he was out of sight.

“Was that blather really worth a whole coinfish?” Revel asked.

“Listen.” El Sha La cupped a hand to her ear and snapped her fingers. Not long after, a scream bounded over the waves.

“Did you kill him? That’s bad luck,” Sters asked. His heavy brows arced with alarm.

El Sha La shook her head. The wail in the distance trailed into howls of outrage.

“Mage’s gold!” Hat guessed. El Sha La nodded.

“I’ve been practicing that. It’s no great swindle. He’d have smoked it all up anyway.”

Hat’s smile slid away.

“Suppose you’re right.”

She was, but there was no joy in it. Kermit’s screams fell away as they rowed on, into the Mouth of Madness.